Cute Little Totoro

Uhh. I don't know why I do half the things i do. For example, why do I read posts at this etiquette forum. It's so terrible. It's just people complaining about other people, then people talk about the complaining, forever. The discussion i linked to is over 500 posts long, and is about tipping waitresses. There have also been 400+ post long arguments about taking your shoes off when you enter someones house (full-out fights, too. For people on an etiquette forum, these people can be awfully rude).

So anyway, I was reading something about something and someone had made a comment on how they hate it when people pronounce nuclear "nuc-u-lar."

Now to start, I have never understood why people get so upset about this isn the first place. It's just a word. It isn't like you didn't know what they just said. I swear, I think if I told some of these people that there was a huge pile on "nucular" waste in the middle of thier child's playground,the first thing I'd hear would be "'nu-clee-ur', it's pronounced 'nu-clee-ur.' You know, I just hate it when people say that wrong. *insert disparraging comment about the president, poor people, southerners or texans here*."

Then their childern would die be mutated into angsty, tragic, spiderman-style superheros. And it would serve them right.

Where was I. Oh yes, nuclear. And my god, people, it's not like the English language was handed down to us a thousand years ago, as is, from the Lutheran god Linguar. It got to be the way it is because our ancestors didn't pronounce words the same as everyone before them. Language is a living, evolving thing. Dictionaries aren't rulebooks as much as they are snapshots. And trying to make English stay exactly the way it is now is both pointless and stupid.

A few hundred years ago, people decided that saying things like "k-nicht" and "k-nife" was stupid. So they stopped saying the k at the beginning of "kn." And can you blame them? Do you really want to say things like "I don't k-no whether I like the brass or the brushed nickel k-nobs better." Just say it out loud. They were right, weren't they?

And those people are exactly the same as the people who say "nucular." Except that they're dead. But other than that, you know.

And for all those people who complain about St. Louis street and place names, I don't want to alarm you, but we aren't in France. I'm sorry if that's where you're parents told you you were going when you got on that plane, but this is the midwest. And really, we don't speak French here. So, yes, even if you don't like it, that neighborhood is 'Creeve Core.' And generally speaking, that street is 'Go-thee'. So sorry.

Anyway, that's about all the venting I can do for now.

Except for this list, which is quite annoying. Especially the attitude expressed in this quote, from the entry on 'library':

As mentioned before, English speakers dislike two [r]s in the same word. However, we have to buck up and pronounce them all.

No, we don't. We are adults, and this is our language. We can say these words how we see fit, and leave out any number of difficult to pronounce Rs.